I just watched a guy nearly die. He was sliding down the dreaded Altenberg track, wildly out of control . His sled seemed to have a mind of its own, forcing him to Tokyo-Drift his way down the serpentine ice chute. A paper airplane flying through a hurricane would appear more controlled than this poor soul on his skeleton sled. The distraught slider entered the critical curve 9 skidding and pointing up; a position that had disaster written all over it. The g-forces whipped him up into the corner and he rose swiftly, then fell, then was picked up on the end of the corner and was violently flung through the air and across the ice to the other side of the track where his body folds over the concrete wall like a rag doll thrown against a table's edge.

That's the Altenberg track, and that's where I made my World Cup debut. I had never been to the track before, and I had to learn it as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it's not a track that one can pick up in a single visit, and the track would prove to get the better of me. Although I avoided any spectacular crashes, the week of training had me bruised and shaken, and I entered the race without high hopes. I wound up in 24th place overall; 4 places short of reaching the finals. The average finish for a US men's World Cup skeleton racer at the Altenberg track in the previous 3 world cup events was 21st, so all in all I wasn't too far off the pace, but it was still a bit of a disappointment. ​But things could have been a lot worse. Clearly. I'm told that the young man who had the horrific crash will be fine, although he won't be sliding skeleton for a while. I'm lucky in that I get to race another day.